I’m in the process of moving my image library between houses, and so for my post today I have delved into the images I have online on my main website to see what might be suitable material for a blog post. I haven’t posted a wedding shot in a while so I picked out this photo, which reminds me of one of the A-Team’s catchphrases – “I love it when a plan comes together”.
The bride and groom you see in this photo are Claire and Pat, and the photograph was taken at their wedding in St. James’ church in Killorglin in 2007. It’s a reasonably big church, and I was reasonably far back, and with the light levels low, I was struggling to get any sharp shots with my 70-300mm lens. A rule of thumb for shooting with a 300mm lens would require a shutter speed of 1/300s to keep shots sharp, and there wasn’t enough natural light in the church to facilitate that. With a shorter lens, things got a tad easier, but I was still struggling to get any good shots.
I changed my approach and decided to take control of the blur that was creeping into many of my photos uninvited, by exploiting it in a creative way in the hope of getting a good shot. That was roughly the idea at least when I slowed my shutter speed down to 1/6s and focused on Claire as she walked down from the altar having lit the unity candle with her about-to-be-husband.
I couldn’t control the blur that 1/6s was going to cause, but I could at least try to get the bride sharp in the final shot by tracking her as she walked from left to right, and, as the camera was panning to keep her in the centre of frame, firing off a couple of shots in quick succession. More shots = more chance one of them will be sharp – at least in the centre.
And amazingly, that half-baked idea to overcome a problem caused by the shooting environment I found myself in actually kind of worked.
You could achieve a similar effect in Photoshop with some added blur, but that wouldn’t be half as satisfying now would it?
Hannibal Smith would be proud!
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